“Kuznetsova’s standout debut offers a fresh and funny look into the life of a bold young immigrant woman….Using light humor, Kuznetsova tackles difficult themes in her sparky narrator’s life; the nuances of trauma and campus rape culture are particularly well handled. While a yearning and affection for her homeland underlie much of the novel, Oksana’s story is that of a young woman making her own place in a world both new and familiar. This accomplished and frank work is a new take on an immigrant girl’s complicated coming-of-age.” — Publisher’s Weekly

“ Kuznetsova has created a heroine for the ages in her sparkling, piercingly insightful debut.” —Booklist

“Kuznetsova authentically portrays the nuances of growing up with a Soviet Jewish family… Each character is complex and unforgettable… even in heavier moments, Kuznetsova makes us laugh using Oksana’s genuine and comically honest character as she paves her own path to self-discovery.” —Jewish Book Council

"I LOVE Russian-American coming-of-age stories, and this one is a doozy! Maria Kuznetsova writes like a dream!" —Gary Shteyngart

““An irresistible, irrepressible comic saga. I utterly loved every page." —Anthony Marra, author of The Tsar of Love and Techno

“Like Oksana herself, this story is fierce, funny, brilliant, and irresistible. Kuznetsova has managed a neat trick here: a coming-of-age novel written with the perfect combination of longing and irreverence and threaded through with wonderful surprises. I fell for Oksana hard and fast and I know you will, too.” —Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, author of the New York Times bestseller The Nest

“Maria Kuznetsova writes with great nuance and deep honesty about American girlhood, and her Oksana will win your heart and make you sit up and pay attention. This is a complex, beautifully rendered debut.”—Pam Houston, author of Deep Creek

“A glorious, risky, exuberant book that somehow manages to be about ill-advised sex and the inexorable weight of history. Maria Kuznetsova writes with a deceptive ease that sweetens the melancholy and deepens the humor. I loved every word.” —Jade Chang, author of The Wangs Vs. the World

“A remarkable novel, heartwarming and so hilarious that the poignancy and tenderness takes you by surprise, again and again. It was impossible not to root for Oksana, no matter how mischievous her adventure.” —Fatima Farheen Mirza, author of the New York Times bestseller A Place for Us

"An absolutely winning book by a genuinely new-feeling voice: Fiendishly funny, cheerfully disobedient, and perfect in its rendition of the adult-world absurdities a young person must endure on the way to becoming an adult of her own. By the end, you're a part of Oksana's exquisitely drawn, nutso family." —Boris Fishman, author of Don't Let My Baby Do Rodeo

"Little devil, infinite imbecile, poor futureless child - all the names her displaced, loving family gives to her as she crashes and burns and wanders the wilderness of her inheritance - fit perfectly. In Oksana, Maria Kuznetsova has also created a character of great passion and depth – of tragedy, even, too – the very sort that populates the stories of Chekhov and Tolstoy, the poems of Anna Akhmatova and all the other Russian writers Oksana looks to for comfort and company and some sort of bearing in this absurd world. This novel is a stark, hilarious delight." —Paul Harding, Pulitzer-Prize winner of Tinkers

“This is a funny, mischievous, and indeed badly behaved novel about a young woman who just can't seem to do the right thing, much as she'd maybe like to. It is also warm, tender, and effortlessly intelligent, traveling with ease between the New Jersey suburbs and American college parties to the beaches of Yalta and dead ends of academia. It is, in short, a terrific debut.” —Keith Gessen, author of A Terrible Country